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The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

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Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#31

Post by relaxatorium »

yeukhon wrote: post #16
dchuk wrote: post #4

Isn't this sort of a cake-and-eat-it-too situation? If you want a slim, lightweight laptop that still performs at a high level, you can't expect the old pop out batteries with the little switch we grew up with on laptops. While $400 is expensive to replace a battery, it's obviously not as simple as just popping a new one in, which is the compromise one has to make if they want a Macbook Pro. If you want easily swappa…

Depends. These days with hardware failure rate becoming higher (maybe it's just an illusion due to the ability of providing feedback on the Internet, but I argue that most of the old machines I know still work today but not so many with the more recent one), the next victim can be your SSD. Apple does get some good SSD from Samsung though. The benefit of a lock-down is controlling variable, and placing Apple at a hig…

At the risk of being "cites articles about cognitive biases guy", it's worth remembering that the reason that the old machines you know today still work is because people have generally gotten rid of all the old machines that are broken (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#32

Post by redidas »

dchuk wrote: post #4

Isn't this sort of a cake-and-eat-it-too situation? If you want a slim, lightweight laptop that still performs at a high level, you can't expect the old pop out batteries with the little switch we grew up with on laptops. While $400 is expensive to replace a battery, it's obviously not as simple as just popping a new one in, which is the compromise one has to make if they want a Macbook Pro. If you want easily swappa…

Personally, I'd rather have a few extra mm of thickness and batteries that are not glued to a keyboard. Efforts could be made to keep this tech more repairable.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#33

Post by tptacek »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #26
dchuk wrote: post #4

Isn't this sort of a cake-and-eat-it-too situation? If you want a slim, lightweight laptop that still performs at a high level, you can't expect the old pop out batteries with the little switch we grew up with on laptops. While $400 is expensive to replace a battery, it's obviously not as simple as just popping a new one in, which is the compromise one has to make if they want a Macbook Pro. If you want easily swappa…

Is this a trade-off that most buyers are aware of? I'm not sure it's as simple as "shaving off a couple of millimeters", but if that's the case I know I would personally trade those millimeters for better serviceability, especially the day I realize I need a new battery. I was thinking about switching to a Macbook Pro, but for me this is just another argument to go with something else. Can't deny that the hardware is…

They've dedicated whole chunks of keynotes to talking about how the new batteries are integrated with the chassis. Obviously, most of their customers don't care, but then: you can say that about this story too! Most people just take their laptops back to the Apple Store when they want anything changed.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#34

Post by MBCook »

thearn4 wrote: post #3

I'm curious what other people's perspectives are on the (what appears to me anyway) dominance of Macbooks among developers these days. Is it the convenience of a Unix-y machine with decent drivers, or something else?

As EC1 said they're reliable. Once you setup a Mac it tends to run and run and run. I feel like I used to have to do a fair bit of fiddling with my Windows machines, but that was over a decade ago so it may no longer be the case. Linux was definitely fiddly.

The hardware is very well designed, well put together, feels like a premium piece of equipment. PC laptops used to (and cheap ones still do) feel like junk. Apple is willing to put expensive trackpads (amazing!) in their laptops instead of accidentally crippling the machine with one piece of penny pinching.

OS X does everything I need and does have all the unix stuff underneath so I can use it to do development in an environment very similar (relative to Windows) to the Linux servers code is deployed on.

And OS X has a good community of software developers making great programs like MarsEdit, BBEdit, and all sorts of other things. There is paid software (Office, Photoshop, etc.) if you need it, something that isn't the case with Linux.

The total experience was so much better than I remember with Windows, and I can work well on it. I don't have to worry about tracking down weird drivers. If something is wrong there is one place to go: Apple. I remember the fun of Dell telling me it was Windows and to call MS, who would tell me it was Dell's fault.

So that explains the rise of OS X. I'd place the 'fall' of Windows at two things (this is just speculation on my part): stagnation and hardware.

Stagnation is obvious. Windows XP was great, but it sat around forever while Apple kept improving OS X. Then we got Vista (I won't judge it) very late, then eventually 7, then by 8 and 8.1 MS was actually starting to move again.

On the hardware side the race-to-the-bottom with prices really made it much harder to find good computers that weren't built like toys. By and large the PC guys didn't target that market very hard. Their 'upscale' laptops often felt like lower end ones with better specs but the same build. It seems like this is turning around (a bit) as MS tries to force it, which is great to see.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#35

Post by jhrrsn »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #5

> Next toss in the problem that Apple thought I didn’t have AppleCare on the machine. This is Apple’s extended warranty. This was despite me showing a receipt that showed that I bought both at the same time. Turns out that if you don’t by the machine from an Apple Store, you have to actually fill out some online form to register your warranty. If you buy at an Apple store, they automatically attach it. Anywhere else,…

AppleCare extends the product warranty for an additional year, but outside of an Apple Store (where they register the machine for you in-store) you are simply buying a warranty in a box. It's a failing of the staff that sold the warranty for not making this clear to the purchaser.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#36

Post by mikestew »

thearn4 wrote: post #3

I'm curious what other people's perspectives are on the (what appears to me anyway) dominance of Macbooks among developers these days. Is it the convenience of a Unix-y machine with decent drivers, or something else?

Solid machinery, has a genuine Unix shell ("Unix-y"? More Unix than most Linux distros), if it runs on Linux there's probably a port for Mac OS, sound works out-of-the-box (I know, cheap shot), and I get my work done with a minimum of fuss when I plug in hardware.

Personally, it's the only choice if I'm going to work on iOS, and conveniently I can do Android work as well. Basically (and again, personally) it does everything a Linux box is going to do, plus iOS dev.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#37

Post by matthewmacleod »

That's interesting – Macbook Pro batteries are rated for 1000 cycles. Since this machine has only hit 652, I would expect them to replace this for no charge – since it has not met it's published specs. But I guess I might not have all the information here.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#38

Post by somewheres »

ant6n wrote: post #2

On my macbook pro, the battery is a bit worn down and it hard-crashes when the Battery is at around 5%. You'd think that Apple would be able to write an OS that detects this new low for the battery and adjust the meter correctly and hibernate the computer, so you it doesn't cause you to accidentally loose work. But I guess AAPL can't afford those kind of development costs; or maybe improving the pixels on some transi…

I'd rather see a hard crash and know for sure that the battery is too empty to perform work.

Stupid battery warning meters are a lie, and a waste of valuable power.

If you have enough power to show me that you don't have power, I know your battery meter is full of shit. It means the board can still operate, and is probably performing a small subset of tasks without my awareness, in a low power mode.

Maybe the accelerometer is still capturing events, maybe lots of things are happening, below the threshold of activating the monitor and expensive motors.

The greatest sin of all, though. The hands-down WORST crime committed, is when the hardware IS PLUGGED INTO A POWER SOURCE, BUT REFUSES TO POWER ON BECAUSE "THE BATTERY NEEDS TO CHARGE FIRST."

WHAT???

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#39

Post by MBCook »

franze wrote: post #17

new (1 month old) macbook retina, 12 inch, el capitan http://replycam.com/i/Pasted_Image_28_10_15_17_10_1BE12B12.p... fully charged battery -> 4h max ... (running mostly chrome and keynote) not really the "all day battery life" they promised ( http://www.apple.com/macbook/design/ )

Have you tried another browser? Chrome has notoriously TERRIBLE effects on battery life on Macs.

I'm not kidding. Try Safari for two days and be amazed.

There are probably things you can do to make it better, but for whatever reason Google doesn't seem to care and ships (what I would say is effectively) broken software.

Re: The Nightmare of Replacing a Battery on a Mac Laptop

#40

Post by tptacek »

redidas wrote: post #32
dchuk wrote: post #4

Isn't this sort of a cake-and-eat-it-too situation? If you want a slim, lightweight laptop that still performs at a high level, you can't expect the old pop out batteries with the little switch we grew up with on laptops. While $400 is expensive to replace a battery, it's obviously not as simple as just popping a new one in, which is the compromise one has to make if they want a Macbook Pro. If you want easily swappa…

Personally, I'd rather have a few extra mm of thickness and batteries that are not glued to a keyboard. Efforts could be made to keep this tech more repairable.

Speak for yourself. I want a thin laptop that feels almost like a slab of mysteriously lightweight solid aluminum, and Apple is delivering that.

It's not like this was a cost-saving measure for them; they're not pulling one over on you. They went nuts trying to make these things solid, lightweight, and skinny, and this was a tradeoff they made --- at significant expense.

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